“And whether he was raised by a drunk or by a pack of wolves, it was still him shoving me into the wall of that kitchen,” I said, pointing at the kitchen door, “his hands around Trey’s neck, and his voice reducing you to . . . to this!”
She lowered her gaze as I motioned toward her with my arm, presenting the human incarnation of my father’s degradation. She was a fragile woman, broken by age and devastated by her marriage to a tyrant, yet as toxic as the memories were, she wouldn’t allow them to alter her devotion to the man who had destroyed her. Her willingness to look past my father’s sins was revolting to me. I’d tried that too, even long after he left, but I was beyond it now. He deserved no mercy or extenuation from me.
I turned to the window and tried to wrestle my mind back into the present, away from the images and sensations suffusing the air of this house that still smelled of my father’s maleficence.
I stayed there, looking out, until the chaos in my mind receded, saying nothing until I was sure I could speak without harm to the woman whose life had been as scarred as mine, but whose heart didn’t appear to have been as hardened.
“Sit down, Shelby. Please.”
I turned reluctantly and went back to my mother. She held the letters I had discarded, her knuckles white with strain, her eyes overflowing with tears.
“I know how much he hurt you,” she said, grasping my hand with her birdlike fingers and leaning close to look into my face. “And I know he nearly killed your brother. . . .”
“Then why remember him, Mom? For a stack of letters that only prove that he used to be able to fake being human? For a bunch of pictures that only prove that you used to be beautiful and feminine and . . . and strong before he broke you?” I reached into the box and pulled out the dried rose, dusty and brown and impossibly weightless. “For this, Mom? For a dead flower? Why should I want to remember the man whose imprint on my life has been nothing but shame—and pain—and brokenness?”
I wasn’t sure when I’d crushed the rose. I hadn’t meant to. One minute it was in my hand, held up for my mom to see, and the next . . . the next it was reduced to splinters on my palm. Disintegrated. Dust.
My mom took my hand and brushed the remains into hers, holding them like fragile flakes of all of us. “This flower,” she said, “this rose—your father gave it to me the day Trey was born.” She took a feeble, uneven breath and said, “Your father gave me you, Shelby. He gave me you and Trey. And to erase him—” she looked at the letters and pictures and garter—“to erase him would be to erase you.”
I nodded. She leaned forward to brush a tear from my cheek.
“So I have to remember him, Shelby. I have to remember that the person who created you was not all bad—not all cruel. He was a troubled man. I know that. But he was part of you. I can’t deny his legacy without denying you.” She replaced the letters and pictures in the box, then sprinkled the rose’s ashes over them. “Will you remember him, Shelby, please? Please remember him—for me.”
Shayla and I spent our first Christmas morning together opening the presents we’d wrapped and set under our hideously decorated tree. The tree had become something of a bone of contention, as Shayla was of a more contemporary-slash-chaotic decorating school and I had graduated summa cum laude from the International School of Anal-Retentive Christmas Tree Design. I liked things symmetrical and matching. Shayla liked things random and clashing. I liked things classy and she liked them homemade with a pair of kitchen scissors and a bunch of out-of-ink markers. We were polar opposites when it came to trimming trees, and the end result proved it.
Every night when Shayla went to bed, I’d sneak around the tree and rearrange things just so, and every morning when she got out of bed, Shayla would boldly march up to the tree and put things back exactly as they’d been. Which led me to conclude that there had to be some kind of rhyme and reason to her artistic deviance.
When we opened the presents—my gift from Shayla was a clothespin hot pad she had made at kindergarten—I gathered up my courage and talked with Shay about her dad. It wasn’t the first conversation we’d had about him, but he had died just before Christmas last year, and it felt important to acknowledge him that day.
“Do you remember what you used to do for Christmas with your dad?”
She squinted a little, trying to remember. “We had a twee,” she said.
“Did he give you presents?”
Vigorous nod. “My blue wabbit.”
“That’s right! That came from him, didn’t it.”
“It used to be pwettier, but it’s still soft.”
“It’s really soft, Shayla. Because you’ve loved it so much, probably.” Her eyes veiled with melancholy, and I drew her in, planting a kiss on her temple and holding her close. “What else do you remember about your dad?”
“He was funny,” she said.
Funny. The man I had known had been anything but funny. But I was thankful all the way down to the bottom of my emotional scars that Shayla had been loved by this father I couldn’t imagine, this man who had given her bunnies and made her laugh.
“Do you still miss him a lot?” I asked a little reluctantly.
“I miss his Wondoh Bwead,” she said, and I could tell by the unsteady breath she took that she missed more than that.
“It feels sad to not have your daddy anymore, doesn’t it?” I tried to picture another man when I said daddy so the images of Jim Davis in my mind wouldn’t interfere with my compassion.
“Uh-huh.” Her chin puckered a little bit and her eyes welled with tears.
“Maybe we should draw a picture and leave it under the tree for him. Would you like that?”
She turned her watery blue gaze on me and nodded eagerly—gratefully.
“It can be your Christmas present for him, okay?”
She was already heading for the dining room table, where she liked to draw.
“What do you want to draw for him?” I asked, going to the box next to the couch where we kept her paper and crayons.
“A volcano,” she said without hesitation. And she did just that in the minutes that followed, giving special care to the lava that flowed from the mountain’s red peak. When she’d finished the drawing, she recruited my help to write For Daddy at the top. My hand shook as I spelled out the words in green block letters. D-a-d-d-y.
We hung the drawing from the lowest branch of the tree and propped Shayla’s blue rabbit next to it. It was her way of thanking him, I guessed. For the rabbit. For the Wonder Bread. For the love.
Christmas afternoon at the Johnsons’ was a down-home family affair, complete with a perfectly prepared meal, an exquisitely decorated tree, and the kind of general cheer that radiated a warm glow. Scott, who had been invited to the celebration long before our falling-out, arrived shortly after we did. We’d met a couple of times in the intervening days, always with polite reserve. The first time had been at church on the day following our Christmas tree purchase, and Scott had deliberately approached me, concern on his face.
“Are you okay, Shelby?”
“I’m okay, Scott. Thank you.”
He’d turned to leave but changed his mind. “If you need anything—you know, like your tree falls over or something—just give me a call.”
I’d thanked him again and watched him go. Shayla, on her way back from her Sunday school class, had launched herself at him, showing him her Noah’s ark drawing with pride. He’d smiled and complimented her, then kissed the top of her head and walked into the sunlight, headed home.
And now, we both sat in the Johnsons’ living room nursing glasses of Christmas punch as Shayla played with her new German-speaking doll and Bev and Gus scurried around the kitchen putting the final touches on our meal.
Scott was trying his hardest to diffuse the tension by making conversation, but I could tell it was putting a strain on him. I’d hurt him, and I wasn’t sure he understood why. But I wanted him to know that I hadn’t dismissed him—erased him from our lives. I g
lanced at Shayla, who was so engrossed with her doll that she was oblivious to anything else, and gathered some courage.
“We’ve missed you around.” As conversation starters went, it was pretty lame. I rolled my eyes and saw his smile deepen. “What I’m trying to say is that I’m sorry we’ve seen less of you.”
“Yeah? I am too.”
I felt a sigh shoving its way to the surface and held it down. “I don’t know how to do this,” I said earnestly, searching for the right words. “What I said the other night—it’s true. And I can’t change any of it. But . . . but I don’t know how to do this anymore.”
“How to do what?”
“How to go back to being friends after . . . after what you said—and what I said.”
His eyes connected more intently with mine. “You still want to be friends?”
“I . . .” I hesitated. There would be safety in cutting off all contact, and yet . . . “Yes—of course I do.”
He looked at me consideringly, weighing his response. “After what happened the other night,” he finally said, “it might be hard to go back to the way things were.”
“Scott, if I could . . . If I could, I’d—”
I saw traces of frustration in his expression when he interrupted. “Why can’t you?”
“It’s . . . complicated.”
I tried to say with my eyes what I couldn’t articulate, but he was looking away, lost in his own thoughts.
A silence stretched thin before he spoke again. “I should have waited—been more sure we were both on the same page before I—”
“Wait. Scott, you can’t take the blame for this—”
“I should have given it more thought before just blurting it out.”
“It’s my fault too. I should have been . . . I should have been clearer—sooner.”
He didn’t contradict my statement. “Well . . .” He paused. “At least we know what we’re dealing with now.”
“Yes.”
“And I guess that’s a good thing,” he said, expelling a breath.
“I hope so.”
He rubbed his hands over his face and shifted in his chair, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. “And since we’re the same people we were a week ago—and those people were friends . . .”
“Maybe we can still be?” I offered hopefully.
He stretched his neck, side to side, and I heard two pops. “We can try,” he said. “I mean, we’re both grown-ups, right?”
I hesitated on that one. “Sure. We’re both grown-ups.”
“So we just . . . try to make it happen, I guess. I put the lid back on what I talked about, and—”
“Can you?”
The look he gave me teemed with emotions I didn’t dare identify. He sighed and shook his head. “I’m not sure,” he said, “but I’ll give it a shot.”
I bit my lip and looked at Shayla, grateful for this man who saw beyond his own pain and embarrassment enough to stay our friend. “Okay,” I said with a smile, and there was relief in the word—more than I’d expected.
The smile he returned was kind and sincere and slightly strained. It tore a little at my resolve. “So, here we are,” he said. “How do we start this thing?”
I shook my head in amazement at his kindness. “First, we thank God that people like you don’t hold grudges.”
“He’ll be happy to hear about it. It’s a new skill I’m working on.”
I realized at that moment how difficult this was for him. For a man as confident and driven as he was to admit defeat and allow ongoing contact was a testament to the goodness of his heart.
“And then what?” he asked, sitting up straighter as if preparing for a challenge.
“Well . . .” I racked my brain. “I tell you about my David Hasselhoff fantasies and you tell me about . . . I don’t know. What kind of skeletons do you have in your closet?”
He thought hard and I could see a lightness coming back into his expression. “Well, there’s the high school prom where I stage-dived into a crowd of adoring fans without warning and they all moved out of my way. I broke a tooth.”
“What were you doing diving off a stage?”
“I was in the band.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Guitarist. For—” he made a gesture like he was reading a marquee—“the Raging Atoms.”
“The Raging Atoms.”
“We were science geeks. And my parents threatened to ground me if we went with our first choice for a name.”
“The Raging Test Tubes?”
“The Raging Hormones.”
“That would probably have been more accurate.”
“Probably.”
I smiled at him and felt new buoyancy attenuating the bleakness in my mind. “So—now that we’ve emptied out our closets, wanna go see if Bev and Gus need help?”
“You haven’t told me about David Hasselhoff yet,” he said as we headed out of the living room.
“That’s a conversation best had after a couple mugs of well-spiked eggnog.”
“Cheater.”
“Raging Atom.” I halted him with a hand to his arm. “Thank you, Scott,” I said, my voice soft, sincere. “I . . .” Would it muddy the waters to tell him I needed him? Probably. So I shook my head and kept it to myself as I led the way into the dining room, feeling happy-sad in a mustard-yellow kind of way.
Gus had just placed the largest, most beautiful turkey in the middle of the table when we entered the room, and Bev was busy pouring the drinks.
“Don’t mind the draft,” she said, nodding toward the open window. “We’re getting rid of the burned-Tupperware smell.”
“Been helping around the kitchen again, haven’t you, Gus?” Scott said.
“She loves me for my slicing skills, but she could do without the rest.”
“No one feels sorry for you, Gus,” I said without a trace of sympathy.
“Better get Shayla in here,” Bev said. “The turkey’s getting goose bumps.”
“Shayla! We’re eating!”
“Not yet,” came a stubborn voice from the other room.
“Shayla—now.”
“Wait a minute, Mom!”
For a moment, I wasn’t sure what had happened. I’d been about to use hollow threats to get Shay into the dining room when it dawned on me that no one else was moving anymore. Bev was frozen in midpour. Gus was staring at me with his trademark Santa Claus grin, and Scott had something that looked suspiciously like deep emotion in his eyes.
“Did I miss something?”
Bev put down her pitcher and looked at me with a smile that was warmth and victory and relief and love all rolled into one. “She called you Mom,” she whispered.
My heart did a jig. “What?”
“She called you Mom.”
I looked at Scott for confirmation, and he just beamed his dimpled joy at me.
“I missed it!” I wailed.
“Call her again!” This from Gus, his twinkling eyes alight.
I cleared my throat and tried to sound convincing. “Shayla, come here now!”
And from the other room, right on cue, my sweet, strong-willed child answered, with frustration in her voice, “But Mom . . . !”
I covered my gaping mouth with my hand and looked wide-eyed at Scott. He crossed the room and whispered, “She called you Mom, Shell,” and wrapped me in a hug.
In more ways than one, I felt like I’d finally, perfectly come home.
The canopy hung too low, weighed down by time and dust. The pillows were moth-eaten and smelled of abandonment. Fibers were coming out of the rug we lay on in little tufts of red and black and gray. Our Huddle Hut was decomposing before our eyes.
“You think maybe we’ve outgrown it?” Trey lay on his side picking at a bag of peanuts, his head too close to the sagging sheet above us. Even the quality of our snacks had deteriorated. And when snacks deteriorated in my life, I knew an ending was beginning.
Trey’s legs extended wel
l past the edges of the sheet and he looked scrunched up, somehow—a giraffe trying to fit into an African hut.
“Yeah. I think maybe we’ve outgrown it.”
I was lying on my side facing Trey, head propped on hand, trying to absorb all the fragments and nuances of this ritual that had grown out of our fear and need. There was nothing salutary in the dusty sheet above us, nor in the Christmas lights, nor in the filtered sun petering in from the single attic window. And yet . . . this place had nursed our wounds and buffered our resilience and bolstered our resistance. It had mothered our survival in ways I couldn’t fathom.
This was our last visit to the Huddle Hut. Mom had now had a series of ministrokes, and she needed to live in a smaller place, with emergency care nearby—just in case. So Trey and I had come over this afternoon to pack up the last of her things before the movers came tomorrow. The past weeks had been a slogging journey through mountains of accumulated life-fragments—shelf-fulls of LPs, and closet-fulls of outdated clothes, both hers and his, and drawer-fulls of everyday junk, and cabinet-fulls of china and silver and crystal and pewter. We’d finally had to send Mom to her new apartment, ostensibly to clean it, in order for us to box up and dispose of the inordinate amount of irrelevance—physical and metaphysical—she so desperately wanted to keep.
We’d even cleared out the attic, tossing a dumpster-load of garbage from which we’d rescued only a few old toys and a pair of fifty-year-old roller skates. Trey thought he might be able to get something for them on eBay.
And here we lay in an attic empty save for the Huddle Hut, contemplating the shrunkenness and fragility of the structure that once had felt so grand and safe. Trey rolled onto his back and dropped a fistful of peanuts, one by one, into his mouth. I hadn’t seen him grow up, but in this intimate refuge from our childhood trauma, he suddenly seemed old and strong and calm. My sensitive, fragile brother had deepened into a prevailer who excelled as an “apprenti-chef” in a French restaurant in St. Charles, led his own support group, helped in a homeless shelter, spent time with a handful of good friends who shared his priorities and views about life, and still, somehow, found time to be with me. I was glad to see him developing relationships with so many others, mostly because he’d devoted his entire childhood to just us. And it was good to hear him talk about seeing places and living adventures and investing in people when he’d spent so many years hiding from the outside world because of the stigmas of Davishood. But on this final afternoon on Summer Lane, it was just the two of us lying uncomfortably in our deteriorating hut and contemplating life. That much hadn’t changed.
In Broken Places Page 24